Before Donald Trump’s election, Laurence Berland viewed political protest as a sort of curiosity. He was in a good place to see it: San Francisco’s Mission District, once an immigrant enclave in the country’s heartland of radicalism that is increasingly populated by people like him — successful tech workers driving up rents while enjoying a daily commute to Silicon Valley on luxury motor coaches.

Berland regarded the activism of his adopted city with a mix of empathy and bemusement, checking out Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and protests against the gentrification of his own neighborhood. But now there is less distance between him and activists on the street.

On a recent day, Berland stood with about 100 others — from software engineers like himself to those who work in tech company cafeterias — outside a downtown museum for a rally against Trump. A clipboard-carrying organizer approached Berland to ask if he wanted to join a network of grassroots activists, but Berland waved him away. He had already signed up.

In the place that fought against the Vietnam War and for gay rights and, more recently, has been roiled by dissent over the technology industry’s impact on economic inequality, an unlikely alliance has formed in the left’s resistance against Trump. Old-school, anti-capitalist activists and new-school, free-enterprise techies are pushing aside their differences to take on a common foe.

For years, these two strands of liberal America have been at each other’s throats. There’ve been protests against evictions of those who can’t afford the Bay Area’s ever-soaring rents. And think back, not so long ago, to the raucous rallies to block those fancy buses shuttling tech workers from city neighborhoods to the Silicon Valley campus of Google, where Berland once worked.

Cat Brooks, a Black Lives Matter activist in Oakland, has seen the toll the tech industry has taken on some. Her daughter’s elementary school teacher just moved to a distant suburb after her rent skyrocketed, and Brooks thinks more tech money must find its way into local communities. She nevertheless welcomes the infusion of new energy to the protest arena.

“It’s not about the business of we were here first,” Brooks said. “We’re about the business of how can we support? Division at this time is not helpful.”

The tech industry opposition started when Trump imposed his initial travel ban on immigrants and refugees from seven majority-Muslim nations. The industry prides itself on its openness to immigrants, who comprise about one-quarter of the U.S. technology and science workforce and include the founders of iconic institutions.

Nearly 100 tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, filed a court brief urging suspension of the ban, while Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a Russian immigrant, joined protests at San Francisco International Airport. That was followed by an unprecedented company-wide walkout at Google and now, on March 14, nationwide rallies are planned for a “Tech Stands Up” day of protest.

“People whose pedigree is knocking on doors and calling representatives and waving signs are getting together with people who design apps,” said Ka-Ping Yee, a software engineer from Canada who is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and who works at a startup to help immigrants send cash home. “People are working with people who do really, really different things because they realize it’s an emergency.”

After the election he helped create an online pledge, signed by thousands of technology workers, against building databases for any potential Muslim registries or to aid deportations of immigrants.

Some aren’t so sure about sharing the streets because they don’t think they share the same goals.

Franki Velez, an Iraq War veteran on disability, stood outside an Oakland rental office recently with other longtime activists and renters fighting eviction. There was not a technology worker in sight, and she worried that they are missing the point anyway. They want to change, but preserve, a system that’s benefited them, she said, while protesters like her want to tear the system down and start from scratch.

“They don’t understand it’s a colonial system that’s never meant to be reformed,” she said.

Still, while their approaches can be strikingly different, Velez’s causes are increasingly being adopted by people not like her.

Velez’s group marched to a Wells Fargo branch to hand over a demand that the bank stop investing in the Dakota Access Pipeline. Two hours later, in the comfortable Silicon Valley suburb of Campbell, biotech executive Michael Clark drew cheers after telling a gathering of anti-Trump activists that he’d closed his Wells Fargo account to protest the pipeline.

Clark grew up in New Hampshire and then in Silicon Valley, when his mother took a job at Apple in the 1990s. He always considered himself a political independent, a moderate. But Trump’s election horrified him and, with a friend who runs a gourmet chocolate shop, he founded a chapter of the national liberal group “Indivisible” in Campbell.

“The country has moved so much to the right that puts me in the middle with people I wouldn’t have previously been aligned with,” Clark said. “It’s interesting that someone like me is on the same side as a lot of socialists.”
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Humankind wastes a lot of energy, but thanks to new technologies, it is increasingly affordable to harvest and use it. At a recent energy summit in Washington, one of the participating commercial firms exhibited photovoltaic cells that turn waste heat into electricity. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Sharing services are a growing trend in 21st economies. In London, the Spacehop website provides a marketplace where people who have unused living spaces can meet those looking for short-term work places. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has more. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Humankind wastes a lot of energy, but thanks to new technologies, it is increasingly affordable to harvest and use it. At a recent energy summit in Washington, one of the participating commercial firms exhibited photovoltaic cells that turn waste heat into electricity. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Cars with no steering wheel, no pedals and nobody at all inside could be driving themselves on California roads by the end of the year, under proposed new state rules that would give a powerful boost to the fast-developing technology.

For the past several years, tech companies and automakers have been testing self-driving cars on the open road in California. But regulators insisted that those vehicles have steering wheels, foot controls and human backup drivers who could take over in an emergency.

On Friday, the state Department of Motor Vehicles proposed regulations that would open the way for truly driverless cars.

Under the rules, road-testing of such vehicles could begin by the end of 2017, and a limited number could become available to customers as early as 2018, provided the federal government gives the necessary permission.

Other states allow tests

Currently, federal automobile standards require steering wheels, though Washington has shown a desire to encourage self-driving technology.

While a few other states have permitted such testing, this is a major step forward for the industry, given California’s size as the most populous state, its clout as the nation’s biggest car market and its longtime role as a cultural trendsetter.

The proposed regulations also amount to the most detailed regulatory framework of any state.

“California has taken a big step. This is exciting,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who tracks government policy on self-driving cars.​

Rules maybe ready by year’s end

The rules are subject to a public hearing and a comment period and could change. Regulators hope to put them in effect by December.

The proposal is more than two years overdue, reflecting complex questions of safety and highly advanced technology.

“We don’t want to race to meet a deadline,” said Bernard Soriano, a leader of the motor vehicle agency’s self-driving program. “We want to get this right.”

In one important change from prior drafts, once a manufacturer declares its technology is road-ready, it can put its cars on the market. That self-certification approach mirrors how federal officials regulate standard cars, and represents a big victory for such major players as Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project.

Also under the proposed regulations, any driverless car still must be remotely monitored and able to pull itself over safely in an emergency.

Consumer Watchdog objects

A Waymo spokesman had no immediate comment. The chief skeptic of the technology, California-based Consumer Watchdog, said the proposal does not protect the public.

“The new rules are too industry-friendly,” Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson said in a statement.

The technology is developing quickly. More than a year ago, a Waymo prototype with no steering wheel or pedals drove a blind man on city streets in Texas.

Are they safer?

Supporters say the cars may one day be far safer than those with humans at the wheel, since the machinery won’t drive distracted, drunk or drowsy.

During road-testing in California, self-driving cars with human backup drivers are believed to have caused a few collisions.

A year ago, Waymo reported that during the 424,331 miles its cars had driven themselves, a human driver intervened 11 times to avoid a collision. In an update earlier this year, Waymo said its fleet had driven 636,868 miles in autonomous mode; it did not say how many crashes were avoided.

In all, 27 companies have Department of Motor Vehicles permits to test on California roads.

Waymo was able to legally put its prototype on the road in Texas because state law there does not prohibit a fully driverless car. Other states have explicitly invited the technology onto its roads, including Michigan, whose governor signed a bill in December that allows the public testing of cars with no driver.

In the meantime, the industry has been lobbying the U.S. Transportation Department and Congress for rule changes that could speed the introduction of truly driverless cars.
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Movie stars, tech moguls and music artists are among those converging in Austin, Texas, starting this week, as part of South by Southwest Conference and Festivals.

Known by its shorthand SXSW, the nine-day event, now in its 31st year, mixes music, film, comedy and digital entertainment, as well as technology and politics.

The event in the Texas capital, normally a low-key tech hub, has become an important nexus where the already successful mix with the aspiring. New movies premiere, music acts perform and startups pitch their wares. Twitter gained traction at SXSW in 2007, putting up flat-panel screens in the hallways.

But not every new tech or its CEO can call SXSW experience a success. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg struggled through his keynote interview in 2008. Meerkat, a video streaming app that took off in SXSW 2015, quickly faded.

This year, among the actors, musicians and tech celebrities, Buzz Aldrin, the former astronaut who walked on the moon in 1969, will speak about human space exploration.

U.S. government officials and American politicians also come to mingle with the celebrities and tech executives. At last year’s SXSW, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama spoke to the festival-goers.

FBI Director James Comey was expected to speak at this year’s event, but he canceled. In his place, James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, is scheduled to discuss the “intersection of national security, technology and First Amendment rights.”

On Sunday, Joe Biden, the former U.S. vice president, will speak about his work on cancer research as part of the Biden Cancer Initiative.

The intersection of politics and technology is one major theme this year, with SXSW organizers creating a “Tech Under Trump” series of discussions. Topics include immigration, self-driving cars and the effects that artificial intelligence may have on jobs. One panel, “Startup investing in the Trump years,” will look at how the Trump administration could affect the investment landscape.

Some panels tout how technology can be used to achieve goals such as helping people seeking faith. Yasmin Green, head of research and development at Jigsaw — a technology incubator that is part of Alphabet, Google’s parent company — will discuss how technology can be used to fight extremism.

Other sessions focus on bleaker possibilities, like how technology can potentially hurt people, such as robots taking jobs.

Ultimately, SXSW this year, as in the past, is a giant party with thousands of people looking for the next big thing.
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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are expecting their second child.

 

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg says his wife Priscilla Chan is pregnant with a girl. The couple already has a 1-year-old daughter.

 

In his post, Zuckerberg writes that he’s happy his first daughter, Max, will have a sister. Zuckerberg says he grew up with three sisters and they taught him to learn from smart, strong women. He also says his wife grew up with two sisters.

 

Zuckerberg says he and his wife can’t wait to welcome the baby and do their best to raise another strong woman.

 
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If the tech industry is drawing one lesson from the latest WikiLeaks disclosures, it’s that data-scrambling encryption works, and the industry should use more of it.

 

Documents purportedly outlining a massive CIA surveillance program suggest that CIA agents must go to great lengths to circumvent encryption they can’t break. In many cases, physical presence is required to carry off these targeted attacks.

 

“We are in a world where if the U.S. government wants to get your data, they can’t hope to break the encryption,” said Nicholas Weaver, who teaches networking and security at the University of California, Berkeley. “They have to resort to targeted attacks, and that is costly, risky and the kind of thing you do only on targets you care about. Seeing the CIA have to do stuff like this should reassure civil libertarians that the situation is better now than it was four years ago.”

 

More encryption

 

Four years ago is when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed details of huge and secret U.S. eavesdropping programs. To help thwart spies and snoops, the tech industry began to protectively encrypt email and messaging apps, a process that turns their contents into indecipherable gibberish without the coded “keys” that can unscramble them.

 

The NSA revelations shattered earlier assumptions that internet data was nearly impossible to intercept for meaningful surveillance, said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the Washington-based civil-liberties group Center for Democracy & Technology. That was because any given internet message gets split into a multitude of tiny “packets,” each of which traces its own unpredictable route across the network to its destination.

 

The realization that spy agencies had figured out that problem spurred efforts to better shield data as it transits the internet. A few services such as Facebook’s WhatsApp followed the earlier example of Apple’s iMessage and took the extra step of encrypting data in ways even the companies couldn’t unscramble, a method called end-to-end encryption.

 

Challenges for authorities

 

In the past, spy agencies like the CIA could have hacked servers at WhatsApp or similar services to see what people were saying. End-to-end encryption, though, makes that prohibitively difficult. So the CIA has to resort to tapping individual phones and intercepting data before it is encrypted or after it’s decoded.

 

It’s much like the old days when “they would have broken into a house to plant a microphone,” said Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University professor who has long studied cybersecurity issues.

 

Cindy Cohn, executive director for Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group focused on online privacy, likened the CIA’s approach to ” fishing with a line and pole rather than fishing with a driftnet.”

 

Encryption has grown so strong that even the FBI had to seek Apple’s help last year in cracking the locked iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. Apple resisted what it considered an intrusive request, and the FBI ultimately broke into the phone by turning to an unidentified party for a hacking tool – presumably one similar to those the CIA allegedly had at its disposal.

 

On Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey acknowledged the challenges posed by encryption. He said there should be a balance between privacy and the FBI’s ability to lawfully access information. He also said the FBI needs to recruit talented computer personnel who might otherwise go to work for Apple or Google.

 

Government officials have long wanted to force tech companies to build “back doors” into encrypted devices, so that the companies can help law enforcement descramble messages with a warrant. But security experts warn that doing so would undermine security and privacy for everyone. As Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed out last year, a back door for good guys can also be a back door for bad guys. So far, efforts to pass such a mandate have stalled.

 

Still a patchwork

 

At the moment, though, end-to-end encrypted services such as iMessage and WhatsApp are still the exception. While encryption is far more widely used than it was in 2013, many messaging companies encode user data in ways that let them read or scan it. Authorities can force these companies to divulge message contents with warrants or other legal orders. With end-to-end encryption, the companies wouldn’t even have the keys to do so.

 

Further expanding the use of end-to-end encryption presents some challenges. That’s partly because encryption will make it more difficult to perform popular tasks such as searching years of emails for mentions of a specific keyword. Google announced in mid-2014 that it was working on end-to-end encryption for email, but the tools have yet to materialize beyond research environments.

 

Instead, Google’s Gmail encrypts messages in transit. But even that isn’t possible unless it’s adopted by the recipient’s mail system as well.

 

And encryption isn’t a panacea, as the WikiLeaks disclosures suggest.

 

According to the purported CIA documents, spies have found ways to exploit holes in phone and computer software to grab messages when they haven’t been encrypted yet. Although Apple, Google and Microsoft say they have fixed many of the vulnerabilities alluded to in the CIA documents, it’s not known how many holes remain open.

 

“There are different levels where attacks take place, said Daniel Castro, vice president with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “We may have secured one level (with encryption), but there are other weaknesses out there we should be focused on as well.”

 

Cohn said people should still use encryption, even with these bypass techniques.

 

“It’s better than nothing,” she said. “The answer to the fact that your front door might be cracked open isn’t to open all your windows and walk around naked, too.”

 
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If this week’s WikiLeaks document dump is genuine, it includes a CIA list of the many and varied ways the electronic device in your hand, in your car, and in your home can be used to hack your life.

It’s simply more proof that, “it’s not a matter of if you’ll get hacked, but when you’ll get hacked.” That may be every security expert’s favorite quote, and unfortunately they say it’s true. The WikiLeaks releases include confidential documents the group says exposes “the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.”

The CIA has refused to confirm the authenticity of the documents, which allege the agency has the tools to hack into smartphones and some televisions, allowing it to remotely spy on people through microphones on the devices.

Watch: New Generation of Hackable Internet Devices May Always Be Listening

WikiLeaks also claimed the CIA managed to compromise both Apple and Android smartphones, allowing their officers to bypass the encryption on popular services such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram.

For some of the regular tech users, news of the leaks and the hacking techniques just confirms what they already knew. When we’re wired 24-7, we are vulnerable.

“The expectation for privacy has been reduced, I think,” Chris Coletta said, “… in society, with things like WikiLeaks, the Snowden revelations … I don’t know, maybe I’m cynical and just consider it to be inevitable, but that’s really the direction things are going.”

The internet of things

The problem is becoming even more dangerous as new, wired gadgets find their way into our homes, equipped with microphones and cameras that may always be listening and watching.

One of the WikiLeaks documents suggests the microphones in Samsung smart TV’s can be hacked and used to listen in on conversations, even when the TV is turned off.

Security experts say it is important to understand that in many cases, the growing number of wired devices in your home may be listening all the time.

“We have sensors in our phones, in our televisions, in Amazon Echo devices, in our vehicles,” said Clifford Neuman, the director of the Center for Computer Systems Security, at the University of Southern California. “And really almost all of these attacks are things that are modifying the software that has access to those sensors, so that the information is directed to other locations. Security practitioners have known that this is a problem for a long time.”

Neuman says hackers are using the things that make our tech so convenient against us.

“Certain pieces of software and certain pieces of hardware have been criticized because, for example, microphones might be always on,” he said. “But it is the kind of thing that we’re demanding as consumers, and we just need to be more aware that the information that is collected for one purpose can very easily be redirected for others.”

Tools of the espionage trade

The WikiLeaks release is especially damaging because it may have laid bare a number of U.S. surveillance techniques. The New York Times says the documents it examined lay out programs called “Wrecking Crew” for instance, which “explains how to crash a targeted computer, and another tells how to steal passwords using the autocomplete function on Internet Explorer.”

Steve Grobman, chief of the Intel Security Group, says that’s bad not only because it can be done, but also because so-called “bad actors” now know it can be done. Soon enough, he warns, we could find our own espionage tools being used against us.

“We also do need to recognize the precedents we set, so, as offensive cyber capabilities are used … they do give the blueprint for how that attack took place. And bad actors can then learn from that,” he said.

So how can tech-savvy consumers remain safe? Security experts say they can’t, and to remember the “it’s not if, but when” rule of hacking.

The best bet is to always be aware that if you’re online, you’re vulnerable.
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It’s not a matter of “if” you’ll be hacked, but “when” you’ll be hacked. That may be every security expert’s favorite quote, and unfortunately they say it’s true. A Wikileaks dump of alleged CIA documents that includes electronic hacking techniques makes it abundantly clear that no one is safe. The leaks and the revealing CIA techniques reinforce the notion that when we’re wired 24-7, we are vulnerable. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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New U.S. solar installations nearly doubled last year, but slowing demand for both residential and large-scale systems, falling panel prices and concerns about looming federal tax reform are still dampening investor appetite for the sector.

Solar installations soared 97 percent to 14.8 gigawatts in 2016, according to a report released Thursday by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The technology is cheaper than ever, with panel prices dropping 40 percent last year, and many utilities procuring solar on the basis of cost alone.

But the dramatic drop in panel prices has hampered solar manufacturers’ profits and ramped up competition for utility-scale contracts among developers, companies said in recent weeks while reporting fourth-quarter results. Add in a slowdown in the residential market, tax reform pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump, climbing interest rates and falling oil prices, and stock market investors remain skittish about solar.

2017 a transition year

Credit Suisse analyst Andrew Hughes said in a client note on Thursday that the key risk to his “outperform” rating on shares of residential solar player Sunrun was “investor sentiment, which in a rising interest rate and falling oil price market obscured by tax policy uncertainty remains tepid.”

The MAC Global Solar Energy index, which tracks shares of solar power companies, slid 43 percent in 2016. The index has recovered to gain nearly 8 percent so far this year but remains 65 percent below its year-ago level.

U.S. module manufacturers and project developers SunPower and First Solar Inc are both viewing 2017 as a transition year for their businesses, they said after reporting in February losses for the fourth quarter of last year.

SunPower Chief Executive Tom Werner in a conference call predicted “intense competition for the forseeable future in mainstream power plants,” adding that some companies were selling panels at below cash cost.

A slowdown is forecast

Indeed, the solar industry report released Thursday forecasts a slowdown in the market this year after last year’s boom. Utility systems accounted for more than 10.5 GW of the total in 2016, but are not expected to exceed 10 GW again until 2021, the report said.

The 2016 boom was largely due to a rush by developers to claim a federal tax credit for solar systems that had been expected to expire at the end of the year. The five-year extension of that credit, however, has allowed projects to be pushed into this year and beyond.

Though Trump has not called for ending tax credits for solar and other renewable energy, he has expressed doubts about the role of clean power sources.

Home installations are growing

On the solar residential side, installations grew 19 percent to 2.6 GW last year, down from 66 percent growth in 2015. Growth has slowed in major markets like California, where many of the households most interested in solar have already put up panels.

Tesla, which acquired residential market leader SolarCity late last year, said last month that it deployed 201 megawatts of solar in the fourth quarter, a more than 20 percent drop from the same period a year earlier.

SolarCity rival Sunrun reported a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street estimates due to cost cuts, but said growth would be substantially slower in 2016. System deployments rose 40 percent in 2016, but are expected to rise just 15 percent this year, Sunrun said.

“While it may be slowing, it is still growing. That is an important piece of the story,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in an interview. “Some of that resetting is to be expected.”
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